Noland Arbaugh

First human recipient of Neuralink’s investigational Telepathy brain-computer interface implant; after a spinal cord injury left him with tetraplegia, he became publicly known for demonstrating computer cursor control and gaming using neural signals.

Neuralink Says 20-Patient Scale Is Advancing Brain-AI Interfaces

Neuralink co-founder and president DJ Seo told Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire at AI Ascent 2026 that the company has moved from a single human implant demonstration to more than 20 patients, while still treating its current work as restoration of lost function rather than elective enhancement. Seo argued that Neuralink’s larger aim is not faster computer control but a higher-bandwidth interface between brains and AI, eventually enabling direct, multimodal transfer of concepts. The path there, he said, depends less on a single implant breakthrough than on scaling surgery, robotics, manufacturing, clinical evidence and neural-data models.

Sequoia CapitalMay 28, 202612 min read